


Gloxalias and other ways to say I love you

by writworm42



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Anxiety, Cancer, F/F, Grief, Hospitalization, Lesbian AU, Non-binary character, Parenthood, Past minor character death, References to Religion, Slow Burn, childhood cancer, hospital au, more flowers because I gotta cope somehow and lately flowers are It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 04:10:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20203501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writworm42/pseuds/writworm42
Summary: Brooke works in a hospital gift shop. Vanessa is the mom of a young cancer patient who really loves flowers. It's no match made in Heaven, but they might just be able to create their own.This fic has the potential to be hugely, massively triggering. There's grief, mentions of death, descriptions of anxiety, and explicit content to do with childhood cancer, surgery, and there's a lot of medical content. PLEASE take care of yourselves.





	Gloxalias and other ways to say I love you

**Author's Note:**

> Me: I'm going to take a hiatus  
Also me: writes this
> 
> I'm still not guaranteeing I'll post much more fic over the next couple of weeks, but I've been up in my feelings for the last couple of days and this was the result. Thank you times three million to Holtzmanns for being here for me, for encouraging me, and for beta-ing this fic and encouraging me to post it.

The first time Brooke sees Vanessa, she’s combing through the hospital gift shop looking for flowers.

“Are you sure your unit allows flowers?” Brooke asks when the woman reaches the counter with an armful of daisies.

“Oh, um… No.” she looks taken aback by the question, like it was one she’s never considered. “You even allowed to ask me that? Consternationality an’ all that?” 

Brooke is unable to keep herself from cracking a little smile. “Nah, confidentiality only applies to doctors. I’m just a lowly cashier,” she sighs with a fake forelorness that makes the other woman laugh, a loud, scratchy bark that makes everyone within fifty feet of the gift shop turn around in alarm. 

Brooke thinks it’s infectious.

“Seriously though, mama, I ain’t actually sure.” the woman shrugs after they both finally calm down. “You know if the pod—peda—pom—the kids’ ward lets people have flowers? My kid loves ‘em.”

Brooke doesn’t, and she tells the woman so. For a moment, from the way the bright, lively twinkle in the woman’s eyes dies down a little, Brooke is afraid the woman might start to cry, or even yell. She’s seen it before; distraught family members upset at the exorbitant pricing of stuffed animals or the fact that their loved one’s favourite snack isn’t available taking it out on her, screaming until their voices are hoarse and their rage is subdued by a peace offering of a free purchase of any one item they want. Brooke isn’t supposed to do it, but it saves her jugular, and she can get the desperation and pent-up grief they’re feeling.

She’s about to offer the same consolation prize to this woman when the woman collects herself unexpectedly, letting out a sigh as her face smooths over into something that’s almost a smile.

“Alright, Mary. I’ll check with the nurse and come back if I can.” 

“Brooke.” Brooke says, almost inaudibly, as the woman turns to leave.

“Huh?” the woman turns around, a confused frown knitting itself onto her face.

“Brooke. Not Mary. My name’s Brooke.” She blushes the minute the words are out of her mouth, realizing how nitpicky and stupid she must sound. But if the woman thinks so, she doesn’t show it; in fact, she smiles brightly, the sparkle returning to her eyes as she laughs again, making Brooke relax and laugh a little, too.

“Alright then, miss Brooke-not-Mary. See you soon as the nurses tell me I can come back down and pick up these flowers.”

“Alright then,” Brooke nods, an inexplicable thread of hope weaving through her chest, “See you around…”

“Vanessa. But my friends call me Vanjie.”

—

Vanessa comes back down a few days later, a triumphant smile spread across her face as she marches straight up to the counter.

“Guess who can buy flowers, bitch!” 

Brooke looks up from the stolen magazine she’s not supposed to be reading and grins.

“I was hoping you’d come back.”

Vanessa arches a brow. “You flirtin’ with me, Mary?” 

Brooke almost chokes on her tongue. 

“I’m—no, I’m so sorry, I’m not—“

“Relax,” Vanessa chuckles, raising her hands in mock surrender. “I’m just jokin’, I ain’t mean nothin’.”

Brooke can’t figure out why she feels a little disappointed at the words, nor why Vanessa’s voice seems to hold the same feeling.

Or maybe she’s just imagining it.

Nonetheless, Vanessa circles the flower section for about five minutes before returning to Brooke with the same armful of daisies she had picked out yesterday. Only this time, there are twice the amount, such that the brunette’s face is almost completely hidden behind their petals.

“You good?” Brooke laughs as Vanessa drops the flowers onto the counter with a huff.

“Just ring ‘em up, mama.” Vanessa rolls her eyes, but she can’t hide the little smile she’s clearly trying not to crack.

Brooke starts to do just that, and soon the only sound that fills the room is the rhythmic beeping of her scanner.

—

“So… your kid really likes daisies, huh?” Brooke ventures the next day, when Vanessa was back with the same armful of flowers. The younger woman just blinks.

“I mean, they like most kinds of ‘em, I just don’t wanna fuck up, y’know? I been reading up on all that petal-talk shit, I ain’t want to get them somethin’ that means divorce when I’m tryna make them feel better. I know daisy means happy shit, so that’s what imma stick to.” 

Brooke’s heart softens. She’s been working at the gift shop for about five years now, and she’s seen countless parents blow through looking for something to either get their kids or pass the time while trying not to worry about them. She’s never met a mother so hung up on details that she’d worry right down to the hidden meanings of the flowers she’s buying. It’s downright adorable, and even though she probably shouldn’t, she can’t help but get involved.

“Y’know, I used to be into flower language myself.” She shifts on her feet, suddenly acutely aware of how her suggestion could be taken. And, just as she feared, Vanessa laughs.

“There you go, flirtin’ with me again.” Vanessa winks, still giggling as she watches Brooke’s face go crimson. “Tell you what, I gotta go ‘cause my kid’s got an MRI, but imma be back tomorrow, an’ you can teach me all about that daisy tulip pussyfoot mumble-jumble. Sound good?”

“Sounds good.” Brooke smiles.

For some reason, even after she gets home that night, her body is still buzzing with nerves and something that feels suspiciously like excitement.

—

As it turns out, Vanessa isn’t just back the next day—she’s back the day after that, and the day after that, and so on for the rest of the week. At first, they stick to flowers; Brooke runs through every plant in the gift shop’s small collection, rattling off any fact she thinks Vanessa might find interesting.

“You know, even though tulips are commonplace now, in the 1600s, these things were actually more valuable than gold in the Netherlands. Isn’t that wild?”

“I actually read that the juice from bluebell flowers can be used to make glue. See how sticky it is?”

“Orchids are actually my favourite flowers--Did you know that they don’t even need soil to grow? They can get nutrients from the air!”

Vanessa always listens with intent, nodding and smiling in a way that Brooke can tell shows she’s genuinely interested.

Slowly, they get to talking more, Vanessa hanging by the counter long after she’s traded a creased wad of fives for a new vase or packets of plant food. Sometimes, she doesn’t buy anything at all, only stands across from Brooke, or drags her over to the flower section to talk, the perfumy smell of pollen tickling at their noses as they trade snippets of their life stories.

Vanessa is a fashion designer who works part-time for a swimsuit company, part-time on her own small business designing adaptive clothing for disabled people of all ages. Vanessa’s kid, Frances, is twelve years old and loves soccer, flowers, and their pet frog, Bertha. They’re in the seventh grade but doing math at a grade eight level, and they had come out as non-binary when they were ten, the same year they were diagnosed with a tumour lodged in their occipital lobe. Vanessa and Frances were Catholic, and even though cancer, transness, and faith were difficult to reconcile, the chaplain at the hospital was fearless and the two of them had managed.

Vanessa had been married before, but he had died of the same illness that Frances is struggling with now, long before Frances even knew him. They don’t remember him now, and for that, Vanessa is grateful.

“I still haven’t told them,” Vanessa shrugs through a noseful of baby’s breath. “I don’t want them thinkin’ that they’re goin’ the same way. It’s been two years now an’ the cancer’s gonna be gone after this last round of chemo and then their resection, I can feel it. I don’t want them worryin’ about how their daddy didn’t get the same chance.”

Vanessa leaves that day with an armful of violet chrysanthemums and a weight lifted off her shoulders.

\--

“I can’t tell you how nice it is you don’t pity me.” Vanessa says the next day.

“Mm, what do you mean?” Brooke frowns as she deadheads a pot of violets that nobody’s buying.

“I can tell. Whenever I tell people it’s my kid I’m here for, they get all sappy, an’ tell me they’ll pray for me. An’ it’s nice and all, but it gets old real quick, you know what I’m saying?”

Brooke does. She’s seen it too many times before not to. It’s one of the reasons only she works at the gift shop now; other than the fact that it’s stocked by a rotating parade of high schoolers and a few well-intentioned volunteers on her days off, she’s the only person who’s ever been able to shut that pity off. Most of the time, it’s a survival mechanism.

With Vanessa, though, it comes easier than that. 

“You don’t need my pity.” Brooke shrugs. “You need this pot of violets more.” she kicks the massive pot over to where Vanessa is kneeling, and relishes in the barking laugh that follows. 

Everyone in the lobby hears Vanessa’s laugh so often now that no one turns snaps to attention at its melody anymore. 

And as for Brooke, it’s become one of her favourite sounds.

\--

The date of Frances’ resection approaches far too quickly, and the closer it gets, the more Vanessa asks to hear about Brooke’s life.

“Well, what do you want to know?” Brooke passes the illegally-opened bag of maltesers that she and Vanessa have been sharing into the smaller woman’s hands. 

“I dunno.” Vanessa wiggles on Brooke’s stool, a spare volunteer vest that’s far too big for her framing her hunched-over form. She’s not supposed to be wearing it, not even supposed to be behind the counter, but at this point, nobody would know the difference, and Vanessa needs the shelter. “Tell me how you got into flowers, an’ how come you ain’t a florist.” 

“I am one, technically.” Brooke pops another malteser into her mouth and chews casually. “It’s just hard to get work in a flower shop these days. I’d save up to open my own, but…”

“This job ain’t pay well.” Vanessa nods. “I can tell you kinda like it here, though.”

Brooke shrugs. “Some people collect stuffed animals, I collect stories.” 

Vanessa looks at her with an expression she can’t quite decipher, but dares to hope means something good. Her hopes are realized when Vanessa’s face smooths out, her voice suddenly gentle.

“I bet you got lots of interesting stories yourself, huh, miss Brooke?”

Brooke can feel her face grow hot, and hopes to God she doesn’t look as flustered as she feels. Taking a deep breath and pulling herself together, she forces out a joke. “Wow, now who’s flirting with me?”

Vanessa arches an eyebrow, but doesn’t protest. In fact, she only hums as she pops the last malteser in her mouth, gets up, and walks away, a swing in her hips, twinkle in her eye, and stolen volunteer vest still hanging off her shoulders.

\--

“Tell me more about you.” 

Brooke is locking up the shop when she hears the telltale scratch of Vanessa’s voice behind her.

“Oh, hey.” she smiles reflexively, the muscles in her face so used to stretching into a grin when Vanessa’s around now that it feels second-nature. “I’m actually just about to close--”

“I’m not tryna buy anything.” Vanessa shakes her head. “I wanna… I just… Please. The third floor Tim’s is twenty-four hours, let me buy you a coffee or somethin’.”

The realization hits Brooke in the chest before she can feel any sort of celebration at the suggestion. 

It’s April twenty-fourth.

The evening before Frances’ surgery.

“Okay.” Brooke nods, “Let’s go get coffee.”

\--

Brooke can tell that Vanessa doesn’t drink coffee much from the way her hands start to shake about halfway through her first large triple-triple. Or maybe she’s just that nervous; either way, when Brooke offers her hand, Vanessa takes it without hesitation.

Their fingers knit together almost too comfortably, and Brooke pretends not to notice Vanessa’s blush as the warmth of Brooke’s hand connects with the cold sweat against her own. 

It’s just a comfort gesture, Brooke tells herself, but from the way Vanessa grips back, soft and natural and like her hand has found its way home, she’s not sure she believes it.

They talk for hours, bouncing from topics like Brooke’s favourite childhood TV shows to how she used to dance to her top five role models. At some point, they run out of things to talk about, but rather than settle into silence, they lapse into a spontaneous game of truth or dare, letting swigs of even more coffee keep score as they trade escalating challenges between one another. 

At first, the questions and dares are innocent enough. Vanessa asks Brooke her favourite hockey team, Brooke dares Vanessa to try to throw a balled-up napkin into the trash from her seat at the table. At some point, though, when they’re both full up on coffee and their box of forty timbits is running low, things take a different turn.

“Truth.” Brooke nibbles on one of the last sourcream glazed in the box, watching Vanessa intently. She’s expecting another commonplace question, something boring and by-the-book, but then Vanessa pauses, chewing her lip.

“What is it, Ness?” Brooke prompts. Vanessa exhales deeply in response.

“Are you single right now?” Brooke’s heart stops as Vanessa spits out the question, her eyes locked on Brooke’s face and anxiously searching for an answer in her expression.

It’s nothing; it’s probably nothing. Vanessa’s just trying to make conversation, that’s all. Their connection, their jokes about flirting, Vanessa’s hand still stuck intertwined with Brooke’s--it’s all just two women brought together by an unfortunate circumstance, two women who have become friends, no matter how much Brooke wants it to be more. Vanessa’s different. Vanessa doesn’t want the same thing as Brooke. She _ can’t _ want the same thing as Brooke. She’s a mom, an amazing, fearless, talented working mom, and Brooke runs a hospital gift shop. Vanessa is fierce and passionate, and Brooke sells flowers and candy while watching her life go by. There’s no way Vanessa is asking for the reason Brooke wants her to be. Brooke shouldn’t get her hopes up.

She can’t help but get her hopes up as she answers with a quiet, hopeful, “Yeah. I’m single. Yeah.”

She can’t help but have her hopes melt into relief when Vanessa smiles.

“Your turn.” Vanessa’s grip tightens on Brooke’s hand, and the sparkle in her eyes, that beautiful fucking sparkle that always seems to feel like it’s just for Brooke, is somehow incredibly reassuring. Encouraging.

Almost like a dare.

Brooke takes a deep breath, and then she takes a chance.

“Truth or dare?”

“Truth.” 

“Why do you want to know if I’m single or not?”

There’s a beat, and Brooke falters, an apology readying itself on her tongue. Before she can completely lose her nerve, though, Vanessa stands up, and then she’s crossing around the table, walking towards Brooke, and then she’s leaning down, she’s leaning down with her hands cradling Brooke’s face, and--

_ Oh. _

Brooke’s eyes flutter closed as she leans into the kiss, her thoughts fading away as everything becomes focused on the feeling of Vanessa’s lips against hers, soft and wanting and tinged with the bitter taste of dark roast that’s been mixed with too much sugar. And when Brooke kisses back, Vanessa sighs just a little, her thumb instinctively moving forward to stroke against Brooke’s cheek, and Brooke finds herself wishing that the moment will last forever.

But eventually they separate, and even when they do, Brooke is still buzzing with nerves and happiness and, most of all, relief. Relief that Vanessa likes her, that Vanessa likes her _ back _, likes her back enough to kiss her. Relief that she’s not the only one that the kiss left absolutely breathless, and that she has the foresight to push back a little in her chair so that Vanessa can collapse onto her lap, relaxing against Brooke’s still-pounding heart.

Relief that not a moment later, Vanessa kisses her again.

“Wow.” Brooke mutters against Vanessa’s lips.

Vanessa’s mouth is too busy to answer back.

Brooke doesn’t leave the hospital that night--they’re too busy talking, giggling, and kissing some more, the weight of Vanessa’s body on top of Brooke’s keeping her awake and content until dawn.

\--

Vanessa comes in a little later than usual that morning, but when she does, she’s not alone.

“You must be Frances!” Brooke exclaims as she bounds towards a little kid whose arm is interlocked with Vanessa’s, the hospital gown and cover-up robe they’re wearing billowing around them and almost sloping onto the white cane they hold in front of themselves. “I’m Brooke, I work here at the gift shop. I’m a friend of your mom’s.”

“No you’re not,” Frances smiles wryly in an expression that looks remarkably like their mother’s, “You two kissed last night, my mom told me.” 

“Okay, that’s enough!” Vanessa blushes deep red as she shushes her child, “Brooke, we came by to see the flowers before Frances’ surgery.”

“I came to meet you, too, but the flowers are a good bonus.” Frances adds, and this time, Vanessa joins in the laughter.

“You’re just like your mom, you know that?” Brooke jokes, sticking her tongue out at Vanessa when she gets a silently-mouthed _ fuck off _ in response. 

But still, Vanessa is smiling, and Brooke’s heart picks up a few beats. 

Vanessa told Frances about Brooke.

And Frances is eager to meet her.

“Okay, well, if I swap places with your mom, I can take you to where the flowers are.” The minute Brooke suggests it, she’s seized with anxiety--what if that’s too much too soon, and she breaks the budding camaraderie between herself and Frances? What if Vanessa hates her because of it?--but Frances only smiles and starts to wriggle free from their mom’s grip.

“Sounds good.”

Within a few moments, Frances is leaning down to trace their hands over the petals, leaves, and stems of the plants around themselves, breathing in their smell and rattling off theories as to which plant is which.

“Okay, this is definitely a rose.” they say matter of factly, carefully tracing their fingers along the flower’s thorns so as not to prick themselves.

“Did you know that the world’s oldest rose is 1000 years old?” Brooke leans down, tentatively placing a hand on Frances’ shoulder and sighing with relief when the child doesn’t shrink away. Instead, they grab a handful of the flowers perched next to the roses and shove them excitedly into Brooke’s face.

“Carnations.” they state proudly, and Brooke smiles. Before she can tell Frances that they’re absolutely correct, though, a voice from behind them drags both their attention away.

“There’s a legend that says when the Virgin Mary cried at Jesus’ crucifixion, carnations sprung up where her tears fell.” Vanessa cuts in. “What?” she cries indignantly when the other two look at her in surprise, “Y’all hoes ain’t the only ones who can use google.” 

They continue to pass the time like this until an alarm goes off on Vanessa’s phone, and the air in the room changes.

“We gotta go get you prepped, baby.” Vanessa’s voice is soft, and Frances’ mood is sober.

Brooke has seen this before; families seeing their loved ones off, spending time cruising the magazine racks instead of sitting in the waiting room worrying, not knowing if their husband or daughter or best friend will come back. Those moments are always the hardest for Brooke, the times when her sense of empathy leaks out just a little too much for her not to feel affected even a little bit.

Somehow, even though she’s only just met them, it hurts even more knowing that it’s Frances.

“Hey, good luck today, okay?” Brooke helps Frances up and wraps them in a friendly hug. To her surprise though, Frances only shrugs as they pull away. 

“I’ve been through this surgery once before. My mom says this is gonna be the last one, she can feel it. I can feel it too.”

Brooke thinks about that long after Frances and Vanessa go, planting one long, calming kiss on Vanessa’s lips before the two retreat back up to the pediatric floor. 

\--

Brooke isn’t supposed to leave the giftshop unattended by whatever disaffected sixteen-year-old volunteer she’s working with that day, but no one really ever checks up on her anyway. Besides, being by Vanessa’s side is more important right now; so she tells the teenager restocking stuffed animals that she’ll be back before leaving with a bag of maltesers and huge stuffed frog under her arm.

She finds Vanessa in the chapel, sitting on a pew with a rosary in her hands, the beads clinking as she runs them through her fingers nervously. 

They sit together for a while, saying nothing, Vanessa leaning over to rest her head on Brooke’s shoulder and Brooke hugging her close, humming the closest thing to a hymn she knows under her breath.

Later on, Vanessa will tease Brooke for thinking of ‘Always With Me’ from _ Spirited Away _ as spiritual, but right then, from the way she closes her eyes and breathes into the melody, Brooke thinks that Vanessa might just think of the song in the same way.

\--

Brooke visits Frances the day after their surgery while they’re in the pediatric ICU, fading in and out of sleep.

The nurse lets Brooke and Vanessa know that they can’t bring flowers into Frances’ room, not while they were still at risk of infection, but after some fierce negotiation, they reach a compromise, and Frances snuggles happily into the frog’s overstuffed side as Brooke reads to them from a book about gardenias. 

\--

_ Two years later _

“Babe, come _ on! _” Brooke calls upstairs to Vanessa, who crashes about in response.

“I NEED TO FIND MY EARRINGS! FRANCES, HAVE YOU SEEN MY EARRINGS?”

“No, mami, I haven’t seen anything in four years!” Frances calls back sarcastically, and Brooke has to stop herself from cackling when Vanessa answers back with a string of threats to whoop Frances’ disrespectful ass. But the rant doesn’t stop Frances from beginning to laugh too, their chin-length brown waves shaking as they double forward, lost in giggles. 

Not for the first time, it strikes Brooke just how much Frances looks like their mother.

Eventually, Vanessa does stomp downstairs, rolling her eyes but smiling despite herself as she fixes her earrings into their place on her lobes. 

“Can’t believe we’re gonna be late for our own grand opening because of some Claire’s jewelry.” Brooke teases sarcastically.

“_ Claire’s? _Bitch, this shit is from Pandora, so don’t you dare--” But Vanessa’s indignation melts into begrudging forgiveness as Brooke pulls her close and smothers her in kisses.

“Alright, alright, kids, before I puke, let’s go open this shop.” Frances coughs with false irritation, moving briskly right through Brooke and Vanessa and breaking the two lovebirds apart. 

“Yes, mom.” Brooke replies saccharinely, hooting with laughter when Frances responds with loud gagging noises.

Consisting of only one room, Hytes-Mateo Flower Emporium isn’t quite as grand as the name makes it out to be, but to Brooke, it feels like a palace as she roams between rows of planters, pots, and perennial blooms. 

“I’m so proud of you, baby.” Vanessa comes up behind Brooke, leaning on her tiptoes to kiss Brooke on her cheek as she wraps her arms around Brooke’s waist. Just beside them, Frances reaches up to flip their sign from CLOSED to OPEN, and Brooke lets out a deep, contented breath as the waiting crowd of family and friends begins to trickle in. 

Everything in the room has been two years in the making, and now, it feels like home.


End file.
